Letter to Jimmy (13 page)

There is nothing worse than the person who plays the role he is expected to play, aiding even the most mediocre of directors to exploit his own despair. The world is now full of this type of artist short on ideas, and it has been a long while since the plight of the Negro inspired anyone's altruism. His salvation is to be found neither in commiseration nor in aid. If that were all that was required, the wretched of the earth would have changed the course of history.

For me to say “Negro” is no longer enough to evoke in the mind of the other the memory of centuries-long humiliation endured by my people.

It is no longer enough, Jimmy, for me to say I am from the South to get assistance from the North in their
third-world effort, because I know that aid is nothing more than a veiled prolonging of enslavement, and to be black no longer means anything, starting with people of color themselves. Moreover, Frantz Fanon finishes
Black Skin, White Masks
in terms that should inspire us in our understanding of our own condition: “I do not want to fall victim to the black world's ruse. My life does not have to be a summary of negro values. [. . .] I am not a prisoner of history. I do not have search through it to give meaning to my destiny . . . In the world into which I direct my own step, I create myself endlessly.”
¹³⁶

Instead of seeking out the definition of one's status, one is better served by interpreting and untangling the meaning of words, what they convey, what they imply, for the destiny of the person of color. In the end, definitions imprison us, take away from us the ability to create ourselves endlessly, to imagine a different world. As long as these definitions appear absolute, the question of the other remains acute. It is in this vein that I understand your warning: “And, in fact, the truth about the black man, as a historical entity and as a human being,
has
been hidden from him, deliberately and cruelly; the power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.”
¹³⁷

•
  
•
  
•

In 2004 Albert Memmi published
Portrait du décolonisé arabo-musulman et de quelques autres
, in which he tasked himself with assessing the condition of the formerly colonized, a half century after the “Suns of Independence.” This work shows us to what extent the offspring of immigrants, having lost their cultural bearings, invent themselves by espousing other forms of culture that are now the subject of many studies. The children of immigrants live in a sort of social exclusion that ultimately drives them to delinquency, as Memmi highlights. Disoriented, they turn to the culture of your native country—I should say: to black American culture—that some consider to be a subculture, with all the negative associations that come along with that: “Having refused to identify with his parents, believing himself to be rejected by the majority, nothing remains for the son of the immigrant but to exist on his own. He must therefore seek a model to emulate outside of mainstream society, and outside of its borders [. . .] Naturally he will not look to foreign conservatives, with whom he would experience the same type of rejection. Rather, he gravitates toward the opposition and the marginalized, to what one refers to as the ‘subculture,' preferably American, and principally black culture.”
¹³⁸

The son of the immigrant who “borrows” from black American subculture creates a status for himself not unlike the one you experienced as a black American in Europe: you came from somewhere, yet Europe was not
interested in your roots. Except here we have the son of the immigrant who does not see that the black subculture he chooses has for a long while been an expression of the need to return to the mythic land in the eyes of the black American: Africa.

The immigrant's son, Memmi continues, “still doesn't know, believing he is borrowing from the blacks, that the blacks sought their inspiration in Africa, not only because of their common skin color, but because, judging themselves to still be under the yoke of whites, after having been their slaves, they believe they have in this way found their pre-oppression origins.”
¹³⁹

In this way subculture is a reflex, a refuge, for an entire group that considers itself to be the victim of marginalization. They participate in a mob mentality and a collective desire to reject the mainstream vision of the world. Anyone who rises against the west is a hero for these minorities. We saw this, Jimmy, in the wake of events that changed the face of the world on September 11, 2001.

Finally, through the invention of their own language and style of dressing derived from African-Americans, the young immigrants wear these differences as badges of their revolt. They defy law enforcement who, in their minds, look at them as lifelong “Natives of the Republic”. . .

afterword

dialogue with Ralph, the invisible man

Yesterday I walked the length of Santa Monica Beach in hopes of crossing the vagabond to whom I dedicated this Letter to Jimmy. I hadn't seen him in some time, and I began to worry.

I asked the ice-cream vendor if he had seen this character, easily recognizable by the bundle of clothes on his back. But the vendor had not seen him in some while, either.

So I walked back up toward Ocean Boulevard and sat down at a table on the terrace of Ma'kai, my manuscript in hand. I intended to read over the first few pages of the text since, in several days, I would have to send it off to the editor in France. But I could not do it without finding the wanderer.

•
  
•
  
•

I was immersed in my reading when the sound of a horn startled me.

Lifting my head, I nearly jumped for joy:
my
wanderer was crossing the street, the “don't walk” sign still flashing red. He approached Ma'Kai.

I stood up and waved to him. He looked away, hastening his step toward Santa Monica Boulevard. I quickly paid my bill and tried to follow him. Near a big hotel, I saw him sit down on a bench and open his bundle of clothing. From the disorder of his belongings, he pulled out a book:
Invisible Man
, by Ralph Ellison . . .

I took out a five dollar bill and handed it to him, as a pretext for striking up a conversation.

“You take me for a beggar, too? I see, I see,” he said.

“Actually, I . . .”

“Don't apologize. Please. —Sit down.”

“You like Ralph Ellison,” I asked, to change the subject.

“I read him every day. If I had a bed, I'd say that it was my ‘bedside reading.' Let's say that it's my beach reading, or, better yet, my sand reading. On top of it, my name is Ralph, too, so it's almost like I wrote the book.”

“I haven't seen you again at Santa Monica Beach, Ralph.”

“But I see
you
every day.”

“Oh really?”

“I even know where you live.”

“How's that? You're joking, Ralph!”

“It's a long story.”

“Can't we talk about it now?”

“No, I don't feel like it . . . Just know that you live in my old apartment.”

I remained speechless, simultaneously skeptical and gripped by a sudden distress.

“You think I'm crazy, is that it?” he asked.

“You have to admit that . . .”

“Ask around and come back to see me.”

“I haven't seen you in quite awhile!”

“Oh, sometimes I change locations. Last month I dreamed that people were attacking me here. So I went out around Venice Beach to get some rest. It's nice there, but there are too many people. People also trample my sandcastles and I can't read my Ralph Ellison in peace.”

“But sometimes you destroy your sandcastles yourself.”

“So? I'm the one who built them! I have the right to do what I want with my castles. I just can't tolerate people coming to destroy them. They don't realize how much time it takes me to build them.”

“I'd like to talk to you about someone—an author. This year is the twentieth anniversary of his death . . .”

“James Baldwin?”

“How do you know that?”

“It's written right there, on the paper you're holding. And I see his picture there, too.”

“Oh, right . . . Actually I've just dedicated my
Letter to Jimmy
to you, the text that I'll publish in France in honor of the author who lived there.”

“No kidding! But why would you dedicate it to me? I've never read Baldwin.”

“I'll give you one of his books tomorrow.”

“Don't bother, I only read Ralph Ellison. The others aren't my thing.”

“But why Ralph Ellison?”

“Because I'm an invisible man, too. I'm white, but I'm really black . . . And since I'm a white man, people don't see me; they don't see my misery because I'm part of the majority. So for a long time I've lived this way, hoping that God would give me my true skin color one day.”

“I don't understand . . .”

“You can't understand. Come see me tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“At one of my castles, I will tell you about the place you live. You will know the whole story, and I'll show you things.”

“What time?”

“Four o'clock. By the way, don't forget to bring me one of James Baldwin's books.”

postscript

James Baldwin the brother, the father

The paths that lead us to a writer are as mysterious as the ways of the Lord. Several years ago, I was far from imagining that I would one day “talk” with the American author James Baldwin, who died in the south of France in 1987, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. I was not drawn to him because we had the same color skin. I was born in Africa, the land of his ancestors. I had lived in France, his land of refuge. And now I live in his homeland: America. Was this reason enough to devote my admiration to him, even though most of the writers I admire often have nothing to do with Africa, France or America? Was I simply in awe before a writer whose uncommon path and chaotic life could not help but move me? More than this, the life of every author is often its own novel, sometimes even a tragic one. This is perhaps why the genre of biography exists . . .

And so, in 2007, on the twentieth anniversary of Baldwin's passing, I devoted a book to him—
Letter to Jimmy
. As I wrote this “love letter,” I had the feeling that Baldwin was reading the manuscript over my shoulder, without really interfering in the process. At most, he may have been smiling when I lost myself in my theories, or when I surrendered to the notions I had formed while reading his work. His writing encompasses most literary genres with a dazzling skill that made Jimmy one of the most important figures in American literature. This diverse body of work quickly projected the author of
Go Tell It on the Mountain
to the intellectual forefront of his country's civil rights movement, with an intensity and a sense of commitment that can be summed up in this phrase from his essay “The Fire Next Time:” “To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” At the same time, the themes Baldwin explored in his various novels go beyond the limits of race, such as in
Giovanni's Room
where one notices the absence of the “Negro question,” where taboos are shattered by evoking homosexuality, where there are only white characters, and in a plot that unfolds in Europe—France in particular—not in America as in the novels of his colleagues of that period (Richard Wright, Chester Himes . . .). This type of approach was risky at a time when, in Africa as well as in black America, an author of color was expected to champion the black cause and
the idea of “negritude,” in vogue in Paris, too, the gathering place for most American intellectuals threatened by racial segregation. Baldwin retaliated against this type of socially mandated literature, and in this way his stance enticed me.

If I imagined Baldwin coughing slightly from time to time when I was writing
Letter to Jimmy
, or imagined his footsteps near my library, I would lift my eyes and see before me the photo taped to the wall, in front of my desk. This photo is essentially the source of our encounter. I had bought it in the late 80s from a
bouquinistes
, a used bookseller's kiosk, along the Seine. Baldwin had looked at me then as if he were begging me to save him from his public display. The bookseller shared with me the information that he had known the author, whom he had seen walking around “over there”—he pointed to the Place Saint-Michel. Should I have believed him? I bought the photo and walked down into a Metro station . . .

Sitting in the Metro, I studied Baldwin's features closely. I was half dozing. My own life appeared to me now in black and white, like the image. I had the feeling that I had known this man, that I had met him in the old quarters of Pointe-Noire, in Congo. He had the face of the brother I would have liked to have had, and of the biological father I had never known—Baldwin had not known his father either, a fact that played an undeniably major role in his work. In essence I was asking Baldwin
to adopt me, to take my hand, to lead me to “another country” where “no one knows my name.” And so I invented for myself a brother in his image, and a father in his image. Alas, I would discover that he would make David, his main character in
Giovanni's Room
, say: “People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.” These words echo through my thoughts still today. The destruction they inflicted on my imaginary world was similar to that endured by a kid to whom it has been suddenly revealed that Santa Claus does not exist. To console myself at the time, I tucked Baldwin's image between the pages of books I was reading, whether they were written by him or by others. In this way we were reading the same books and we were traveling together. Much later—I had already moved to the United States—I came upon the same image in a bookstore in a new edition of one of Baldwin's novels. I no longer felt the same as I once had in France, since my image of him now hid a story behind it, a chance encounter that could not be reproduced . . .